Canada is off to a flying start at the Concacaf U-20 Women’s Championship in the Dominican Republic.
The Canadian women’s side beat El Salvador 2-0 on Saturday in its first game of the tournament courtesy of second-half goals from Tanya Boychuk and Kaila Novak.
Boychuk broke the deadlock for Canada in the 57th minute, stabbing the ball home following a scramble inside El Salvador’s box. Novak doubled Canada’s lead the 71st minute, finishing off a pretty passing sequence with Boychuk and Jazmine Wilkinson.
The Reds’ next game at the Concacaf U-20 competition is Feb 24 vs. Guatemala.
Canada is attempting to qualify for the 2020 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, which will be co-hosted by Panama and Costa Rica in August.
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This year’s U-20 Concacaf tournament features a new format, with 20 teams now involved instead of the previous eight. In order to qualify for the World Cup, Canada needs to advance through the knockout stages and win a semifinal match.
Only the two finalists of this Concacaf competition qualify for the World Cup, so the margin of error is slim.
Canada has been drawn into Group E with Jamaica, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Guatemala tied Jamaica 4-4 on Saturday, so Canada tops the group at the moment.
The top three teams in each of the four round-robin groups advance to a 16-team knockout stage.
Should Canada win its group, its first-round opponent will be Bermuda, one of four nations who enter directly into the round of 16 – the others are Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Barbados.
Canada is coached by Rhian Wilkinson, a former former national team standout who scored seven goals and tallied 23 assists in 181 appearances (fourth all-time in team history) between 2003 and 2017. She helped the Reds win bronze medals at the 2012 London Olympics and in 2016 at the Rio Games, and participated in four FIFA Women’s World Cups.
This Canadian U-20 squad features players born in 2000 or later, and all of them have spent time playing in Canada Soccer’s Women’s EXCEL Program at the youth level. Of the 20 players on the roster, 17 have played for Canada in previous Concacaf or FIFA youth tournaments.
Canada has participated in seven of the nine FIFA U-20 World Cups to date.
It’s best showing was in 2002, when the tournament was known as the FIFA U-19 Women’s World Cup. That competition was staged in Canada, and saw the Canadians lose to the United States in extra time in the final before 47, 784 fans at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium.
Canada also reached the quarter-finals in 2004 and 2014.
It failed to qualify in 2018, losing to Mexico in the semifinals of the Concacaf qualifiers via penalty shootout, and the suffered a 1-0 loss to Haiti in third-place game.